There are two possible return values, "google" (when TensorFlow is running in a Google-internal environment) or an empty string (when TensorFlow is running elsewhere).

If you are implementing a ClusterResolver that works in both the Google environment and the open-source world (for instance, a TPU ClusterResolver or similar), you will have to return the appropriate string depending on the environment, which you will have to detect.

Otherwise, if you are implementing a ClusterResolver that will only work in open-source TensorFlow, you do not need to implement this property.

In TensorFlow distributed environment, each job may have an applicable task id, which is the index of the instance within its task type. This is useful when user needs to run specific code according to task index. For example,

cluster_spec = tf.train.ClusterSpec({
"ps": ["localhost:2222", "localhost:2223"],
"worker": ["localhost:2224", "localhost:2225", "localhost:2226"]
})

# SimpleClusterResolver is used here for illustration; other cluster
# resolvers may be used for other source of task type/id.
simple_resolver = SimpleClusterResolver(cluster_spec, task_type="worker",
task_id=0)

...

if cluster_resolver.task_type == 'worker' and cluster_resolver.task_id == 0:
# Perform something that's only applicable on 'worker' type, id 0. This
# block will run on this particular instance since we've specified this
# task to be a 'worker', id 0 in above cluster resolver.
else:
# Perform something that's only applicable on other ids. This block will
# not run on this particular instance.

Returns None if such information is not available or is not applicable in the current distributed environment, such as training with tf.distribute.cluster_resolver.TPUClusterResolver.

For more information, please see tf.distribute.cluster_resolver.ClusterResolver's class docstring.

In TensorFlow distributed environment, each job may have an applicable task type. Valid task types in TensorFlow include 'chief': a worker that is designated with more responsibility, 'worker': a regular worker for training/evaluation, 'ps': a parameter server, or 'evaluator': an evaluator that evaluates the checkpoints for metrics.

See Multi-worker configuration for more information about 'chief' and 'worker' task type, which are most commonly used.

Having access to such information is useful when user needs to run specific code according to task types. For example,

cluster_spec = tf.train.ClusterSpec({
"ps": ["localhost:2222", "localhost:2223"],
"worker": ["localhost:2224", "localhost:2225", "localhost:2226"]
})

# SimpleClusterResolver is used here for illustration; other cluster
# resolvers may be used for other source of task type/id.
simple_resolver = SimpleClusterResolver(cluster_spec, task_type="worker",
task_id=1)

...

if cluster_resolver.task_type == 'worker':
# Perform something that's only applicable on workers. This block
# will run on this particular instance since we've specified this task to
# be a worker in above cluster resolver.
elif cluster_resolver.task_type == 'ps':
# Perform something that's only applicable on parameter servers. This
# block will not run on this particular instance.

Returns None if such information is not available or is not applicable in the current distributed environment, such as training with tf.distribute.experimental.TPUStrategy.

For more information, please see tf.distribute.cluster_resolver.ClusterResolver's class doc.